Death in the Air
by lannerz
Summary: It's her first mission as a Faceless Man in Westeros; and her target is Lady Stoneheart.


**Author's Notes:** This was a practice in writing. I'm not a fan of present tense normally, so this was like a test run for me.

**Disclaimer: **GRRM owns all of these characters and also my soul. Sucks to be me.

**A Legitimate Matter of Blood  
**_A Bastard's Pride_

_Lady Stoneheart._

She's never heard the name before and turns it around in her head for the thousandth time. _Lady Stoneheart._ Surely she would have heard of this name before, in another life, in another time, but the name is as foreign as the land she's come from. (Or perhaps it is the land that she is going to that is foreign to her now.) Still, she wracks her brain for the name, recalling all the knowledge of Houses that she can remember. A long time ago, it was part of her duty to know names like this, but that had been in another life. That duty had belonged to another person.

The person who she is now is not the girl that she once was.

The person on a boat that is docking in the Saltpans now is not the girl that set sail from the Saltpans years ago.

She is not entirely sure who she is now, but that doesn't matter. She'll come up with a name easy enough when the time comes; she always does. That is something that has stayed with her.

She knows better than to ask people concerning the whereabouts of this Lady Stoneheart. She learned early on in her training to ask as few questions as possible, if any. It helps that she hates asking questions anyways; she's always preferred to figure things out on her own.

So she strikes out, sleeping during the day and staying up at night, finding herself in alehouses and inns. Despite the fact that the war has killed many of people, these places are almost always filled and have at least few people in them. She can stay in these places without fear of question or anyone catching on to who she was, not that it matters. That girl is long dead. Besides, places like that are also where you get the best news; that's where people do the most talking without any asking to be done. Alcohol and women make men's mouths move without them ever knowing how. She learned that ages ago during someone else's life.

For the most part, people leave her be. She's just some old woman whose life has passed her by. All she wants to do is sit in the corner and drink in peace. This war has cost her the lives of her entire family. When someone bothers her, another will get up and say, "Aw, leave the woman to her drink. She's got nothing left for her." She doesn't smile in thanks, doesn't acknowledge the help, just keeps sipping on her drink and watching, listening, waiting to hear a bit of news.

She's patient now. That's important to learn and understand. It takes patience to kill and impulsiveness to be killed.

It's nearly two weeks before she hears anything about her target.

Two men are huddled in a corner, one that she vaguely recognizes but can't place. He's wearing a yellow cloak and she thinks, _Yellow, yellow,_ like it ought to mean something to her but it's just beyond her reach. "She's getting restless now," the yellow cloaked man mutters.

"She's always restless," the other one, a much younger man, points out.

"Yeah, but she's wanting to move closer to the Twins," Yellow adds, "and that's dangerous, but there's no telling her different."

"It's always been the Twins that she's wanted anyways." The younger man shrugs his shoulders and finishes his drink smoothly. "It's where we need to go to exact true justice. You know that, Lem."

The name stirs something in her again. Lem. She knows that name, unlike her target. Yes, Lem, the name was involved in a past life, was it not? Yellow, Lem, sighs and nods his head. "Aye, I do. Bastards got what's coming to 'em. The Lady Stoneheart will make sure of that."

_Lady Stoneheart._ Her body immediately begins to tingle with anticipation. She knows that name well, even if she doesn't have a face to put it with. Not that it will matter. She is being paid handsomely to do away with this highborn lady. It took her a while before she was willing to murder women. She thought it wrong. But then she learned that all men must die, including women, and some even deserved it. Like that woman in Pentos that was selling little children and boys to wealthy men, long before they were ready for even the pleasure houses of Lys. Perhaps this Lady Stoneheart is worse. This is, after all, her first contract in Westeros.

When the two men leave, Lem and his unnamed friend, she follows them easily. It's almost too easy, which makes her wary in itself. But they have no clue that they are being followed. After all, they are usual patrons at this alehouse. She has seen them from time-to-time. Just to make sure, she changes faces, so even if they do figure out they're being followed, they won't suspect it is by someone from the alehouse. This time, she takes on the face of a begger girl, dirty and dark from spending her days and nights outside. She's not nearly as small as she used to be, back when she could pretend to be a child, but she's grown taller and a woman's body. She can change her face and her person, but clothes can only do so much to change a body.

As she follows them in the shadows, she keeps thinking of her target. _Lady Stoneheart._ Who is this woman? She knows that she's not supposed to think very much about the person she is going to kill, but she can't stop herself. That's one thing that her training hasn't managed to cure her of. She thinks too much about the lives that she is going to extinguish. She used to not at all, back when she was young and training, like when she killed that Black Brother on the docks out of anger. Now it is all she can think about in the downtime between missions. Some deaths take weeks; one took her a full two months before she accomplished it, and it was the most painstakingly slow task of all. She has learned to become patient, but she has not learned yet to quiet her mind.

They enter a cave and she stops following them. It is night and if she goes in now, without knowing what is in there, she will most certainly get into hot water. Part of her wants to rush in. She can sneak in undetected; she can be silent. That is the old part of her though; and she knows that she must resist the urge. She makes camp in the woods in a tree, able to curl up on a branch with a view of the opening of the cave. She can protect herself, but a lone girl will bring suspicion and interest to people she would rather not deal with.

(She dreams a dream that she has not had in a long time. She is hunting and when she turns her head, she sees her cousins beside her, panting, waiting for her to make the first move. When she looks ahead, there are men in the clearing, men with swords but no armor. She lifts her head and howls to the moon, a war cry that strikes fear into the heart of many, and she rips through the bushes to attack the men ruthlessly.

This is how she was before: so violent and uncontrollable. She can still feel it under her skin if she pays attention, but she stalks her victims too. Tonight is not the night for stalking; it is for tearing and ripping and growling and howling. When she stops to stand on top of a man that is bleeding from his neck, she sees towers and she rips the doublet to shreds, scratching into the man's chest.)

When she wakes up in the middle of the night, out of breath and sweating, she can almost taste the blood in her mouth; and she knows that she is ready for this kill, for this Lady Stonheart. It will be done tomorrow.

The great thing about her is that she always knows who her target is, even in a crowd, even if she's never seen them before. She can just sense them. It's like she can smell their scent in the air and just know that they're ready to die. With the case of Lady Stoneheart, when she rises in the morning and slides down the tree to get a closer look at the cave, she can _smell_ death in the air.

She has seen a lot of strange, wonderful, and horrific things in her life.

A gasp still hisses between her teeth when Lady Stoneheart steps out of the castle.

She catches just a small glimpse of the woman's face before the woman turns and pulls her hood back up, but it is enough for her to know that something is not right about her target. This woman is not just marked for death by the Faceless Men; this Lady Stoneheart _is_ death. She recalls the other names she was told to look out for: Mother Merciless, the Hangwoman. She can feel the noose around her neck if she fails this mission, but she won't fail it. She never fails to kill. It is all she knows to do these days, kill and survive and change.

Again, she waits until night, crouched in the bushes. This type of thing is not meant for daylight. Night is time for the dead; and she knows, instinctively, that this woman must die at night, if she is not already dead. As she hides in the bushes, she thinks about the woman's face, tries to place it with the name, but something is not right. Lady Stoneheart is not who she appears, but she cannot figure out how. It's no matter; the lady will die anyways. Still, the question chews away at her mind; and she grows restless in her waiting. It has been a while since she has been restless; she thought that she put that away, hiding it with Needle under a stone so many moons past.

Lady Stoneheart is bringing back a girl that was buried so long ago.

It is time, and she knows it in her bones.

She slips through the dark like she is a shadow, blending in with the darkness. The camp is silent. There is a sentry guarding the opening of the cave, but he is lazy in his watching, and she's able to slip past him with ease after watching his routine for only fifteen minutes. Almost all of the men in the cave are asleep, curled up under rags and furs, snoring away. She smiles under her masked cowl. Night is her favorite time to kill because she turns dreams into waking nightmares; and there's something vaguely satisfying about seeing men wake to horror and confusion.

It startles her to find the Lady Stoneheart sitting awake and staring into the fire. The lady has her back to her, but she knows who it is immediately from the stiff and completely still way she sits. It's unnatural. The shoes she wears muffles her steps as she creeps up behind her target, a sharp blade already unsheathed and sitting lightly in her hands. This will only take a second; and her target will not even have time to scream. It takes strength to silent her breathing, but she's learned with practice. Killing is almost always stealth; and it is lack of stealth that can get you killed. She's pleased with herself for getting this far without anyone waking.

But when she is right behind the woman and reaches around to put her blade under the woman's neck, she is startled to feel a deep cut already there. Lady Stoneheart has already been killed. Someone beat her to the punch.

It takes everything in her not to cry out and jump away when Lady Stoneheart turns around and burns her with her glaring stare.

"M'lady?" someone sleepily mumbles. A few more people begin to rustle awake.

Her heart pounds in her chest. She must escape; she must get out of here; she must leave right now. But she is frozen in place, held under the stare of this unnatural woman. Lady Stoneheart's hood is down; and now she can see the deep gash on the woman's neck where a blade has nearly severed her vocal chords completely. She sees the claw marks on the pale, doughy skin and the thin, gray, brittle hair. But mostly, she sees the eyes, so bright, so full of fire, her gaze soaked in hate.

She knows those eyes.

They are the eyes of someone long dead.

(But she is dead. She is dead dead dead, even now.)

"Mother?" she whimpers.

"Lady Stoneheart!" someone shouts and more people are awake now, at their feet, surrounding them.

"She's got a knife!"

"Anguy, do you have a clear shot?"

"Who the hell is she?"

She blinks and her face falls, melts away despite herself, and she wears the face of someone that is supposed to be dead too. They have that in common, she thinks deliriously. They are both dead in their own ways, except now she is alive and this woman before her is…not. It is not right. Nothing is right about this. The knife feels far too heavy in her hands and it falls from her grasp and hits the dust at her feet. "Mother?" she repeats.

The woman, Lady Stoneheart, just shakes her head. _No._ The look in her eyes says, _All my children are dead._

But it is Arya Stark that is shaking in the cave now. "You're dead," she croaks. "I'm not dead. It's me; it's your _Arya_." She wants to rush into her mother's arms, but part of her knows that this is not her mother, at least not anymore. This is Mother Merciless now, not Catelyn Stark. So instead, she takes a few steps back in horror. "What did they…? Who did this to you?" She knows the answer to this question. She remembers what Lem was talking about in the alehouse; and she remembers the Red Wedding. It comes back to her; and all she can smell is fire and blood. Her mind spins, like being hit in the head with the flat of an axe again; and she begins to shake with anger. "House Frey."

Lady Stoneheart presses her hand against her throat and hisses, "Die."

And Arya knows that she has a new mission now, a new target, and all men must die.


End file.
